


Eyes Open

by Anonymous



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Apocalypse, Blood and Gore, Cruelty, Dark, F/M, Florida, Gen, M/M, Not for the faint of heart, Present Tense, Read at Your Own Risk, Triggers, Virus, Witness Protection, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies, probably not what you want to read during an actual pandemic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:16:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28940586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: For all the times the world could have ended, why must it happen when they are in Florida?
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago, Kevin Cozner/Ray Holt
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6
Collections: anonymous





	1. Jake, confused

Jake’s consciousness oozes back into his body slowly. In his dream, Amy tells him that she missed him so much. She looks up at him, smiling, and then says, in a weirdly detached voice, "Known symptoms of the new virus are massive inflamation of skin, resulting in large blisters.”

Jake's eyes snap open.

The TV must have been droning on all night. He blinks into the nasty sunlight falling into his living-room, angled to burn right into his retinas. He groans as the newscaster goes on:

“While reports of infections spreading across Eastern Europe are still unconfirmed, numerous videos have been uploaded to social media over the course of the last twenty-four hours. We have to warn our viewers, some of this content is quite disturbing.”

Jake sits up, still rubbing at his eyes. A sour gummy worm that was sticking to his bare stomach from last night’s dinner falls off. On the screen of his TV he can just about make out the grainy image of one figure attacking another. The room is too bright, though. But he can hear the screams and the wet chewing noises before the video cuts off. 

The news lady is back on the screen. She clears her throat. “We expect a statement from the President--”

Jake turns the TV off, not sure what he has just seen, except that yeah, he is sure what he has just seen. He picks up his phone and starts googling. Of course it’s all over the internet already. He checks the date, twice, just to make sure it’s not April first because he’s definitely lost track of time. The only thing he knows is that he’s been in witness protection for five months and nineteen days. That’s how long he hasn’t seen or talked to Amy. Five months and nineteen days.

Jake spends the day restlessly pacing his stupid Florida living-room because this is it, right? The zombie apocalypse? Except no, that’s ridiculous. Holt isn’t there - he checked, knocked on the captain’s door first thing after he’d found some not too stinky clothes to put on - he’s at his dumb job at the Fun Zone. But that’s what he’d say. The zombie apocalypse? Peralta, that is ridiculous. Jake says it out loud in his amazingly perfect Holt voice and it does make him feel better for all of three seconds before he switches on the TV again to see a rattled CNN guy talk about reports of potential infections in Washington D.C., L.A. and New York City. Jake almost chokes on his own spit when he hears that last one. 

Amy. Amy is there. And his mom and all his friends. But this isn’t real, right? It’s not. It can’t be. And even if it is, the government is on top of it. Experts and doctors and the military. It’s going to be fine.

***

By half past four p.m. Jake knows it’s not going to be fine. The tone of the news has changed so much over the last few hours that he feels the whiplash like a kid whose recording of Sesame Street is suddenly replaced by Friday the 13th. Or Dawn of the Dead. Now there are sirens wailing outside and the news lady says: “Stay in your homes, lock the --.” That's when the screen goes black. Jake flinches, then pulls out his phone to see if there are any news on the blackout. Except, the screen of his phone is also dark and remains so, no matter how hard he presses the button to switch it back on. What the fuck?

Stay in your homes, that was the last thing the newslady said.

But Jake knows he can’t do that. He’s going to the gun shop.

***

The thing that’s glossed over in most zombie movies is how it actually gets so bad so fast. You’d think that once what’s happening becomes clear, the government would find ways to nip it in the bud. Isolate the cases and take care of them. 

Except Jake has the feeling that nothing is being taken care of. A cop car shoots past his house, siren blaring and tires squealing. It’s followed by an ambulance and then another cop car. He slips out of his front door, his back to the wall, listening to the fading noises. A shudder runs through him, from his toes to his fingertips. It’s like the air tastes wrong. There is the hint of a smell, sweet and heavy and Jake shivers again.

He needs weapons and he needs to find Holt.

Not necessarily in that order.


	2. Amy, shaken

Amy is at the precinct when it gets worse. She’s been following the news all morning, with grim determination to keep her head. Which she does, even when they get an SOS from the 7-1, followed by a call for backup from the 6-8. Never mind the knots in her stomach, never mind the lump in her throat when, after an impromptu conference call with the other NYPD captains and brass, CJ sinks to the floor behind his desk and refuses to come out.

Amy pokes her head into his office and cranes her neck to see. “Sir, are you… rocking?” And whimpering, but she doesn’t think she should call attention to that. CJ has his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around himself.

“No,” he mumbles, although he is definitely doing it, rocking back and forth, his face buried in his arms. 

“Sir, we need you to give orders on how to--”

CJ’s head jerks up as though he has been poked with a cattle prod. “I gotta go!” he exclaims. His red-rimmed eyes widen theatrically. “Sorry, I just remembered, I left the stove on in my apartment!” Grabbing on to Holt’s chair, he struggles to his feet. “Gotta check that, before, you know, it burns down! Can’t have that! Peace, detective!” He is surprisingly fast once he is upright and all but shoves Amy out of the way to get through the door.

“Sir!” she calls after him, but he only runs faster, breaking into a full sprint midway through the bullpen.

“Captain!” Terry jumps up, ready to give chase, probably on instinct, but Rosa plants herself in front of him.

“Let him go, Sarge. We’re better off without him.”

Terry looks like he’s about to protest, but then one of the uniforms shouts, “They’re locking down Brooklyn!” 

“What?” 

“No one in or out,” says the uniform, Carter, Amy thinks, Officer Carter. He’s scrolling madly through his feed, the light from his smartphone screen reflecting off the sweat shining on his skin. When he looks up, he turns to Terry. “I’m sorry, sir, but I have to get to my family.”

“No, we have orders!” Terry throws his hands up. The whole precinct is staring at him now. A strange silence falls for a second before it is shattered irreparably by screams from the street. 

“Suit up, get down there!” shouts Terry, suspenders straining to contain his bulging muscles. Amy thinks she can see a vein pulse in his forehead. 

_We might not survive this._ The thought enters her brain as routinely as a train arriving at the station. _I might never see Jake again._

“It’s the end of the world, according to twitter,” drawls Gina. She gets up and grabs her coat. 

“Where are you going?” Charles yells, a hint of hysteria in his voice, “You’ve got to stay here, Gina. This is a police precinct, we’ll keep you safe!”

“No offense, I know we’ve formed a charming band of misfits trying to fight the NYPD’s corruption and racism from the inside, but you guys suuuuuck at serious stuff. When the flesh-eating hordes come, I want to be surrounded by US marines with big ol’ guns.” She saunters over to the elevator, then changes her mind and walks to the stairs. “Besides, Charles, don’t you have a son now? Maybe you should check on him, just sayin’”

Boyle gasps, blinks rapidly, then digs out his phone. 

“They’re in trouble,” he mumbles. “I’m so sorry, Amy, Sergeant. I’ll come back as soon as I can!”

A chopper flies over the building. It must be incredibly low because the noise of the rotors drowns out everything else. Amy looks around. The uncertainty is palpable. A few uniforms are slinking towards the staircase as well. Terry is breathing heavily, visibly torn. When their eyes meet, he averts his gaze first. She knows he’s thinking about his family.

“I’ve got to go,” Rosa says all of a sudden. “Sorry.”

“What? No, Rosa, didn’t we just--”

“Got a text,” Rosa grinds out. Amy looks down and realizes that for the past few minutes, Rosa has been holding her phone in a white-knuckled grip. “I need to call them.” She juts out her chin. “I’ll be back.”

And with that, she turns on her heel and makes for the stairs as well.

Amy feels her shoulders slump.

Like a robot, she walks over to the armory. She should get ready and get down into the streets like the sarge said. 

Maybe she should call her mom, too. But her dad’s a cop and they’ll probably call her brothers. They’ll be okay, she tells herself.

If only Captain Holt were here, she thinks, he’d know what to do. And Jake. But she can’t even bear to think about him.

***

They’ve all seen videos of the infected by now, the blistered skin, the bulging unblinking eyes. People lunging at people to sink their teeth into them. They move fast, like healthy humans but they have zero pain response. Upon examination captured subjects were shown to have no pulse, no respiration, but also rigor mortis never set in. However, their cells were degrading at the speed any regular dead body’s cells would. There was activity in their brains, irregular and limited to the brainstem. Subjects showed no sign of awareness, no capability of recognition or conscious thought. The functionality of the brainstem was therefore to be attributed to the virus which meant that the virus remained active inside the dead body for an indefinite amount of time. It was transmitted through the saliva and potentially other bodily fluids entering the bloodstream of another organism. So far, all infected were human. Transmission between humans and another species had not been witnessed but could not be ruled out at this point.

The report - posted on the New York Times website before it went down, is the last thing Amy reads before her own phone dies. She puts on her tactical gear as fast as she can and doesn’t look up when Terry, Scully and Hitchcock join her in the armory.

In full gear, they return to a deserted bullpen. 

“Dammit,” Terry grunts. “Did the armory look all messed up to you too?” 

No one says anything despite knowing the answer. No need to do inventory to be sure some of the gear was missing, guns and ammo, too.

“It’s not your fault, Terry,” she offers but he just shakes his head.

“I know, Terry just thought the 9-9 was better than that.” He fixes Hitchcock, who has been inching away from them, with a glare. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Hitchcock swallows. “Down there, Sarge, you know, duty calls!”

Except it hasn’t. The night shift had had calls non-stop and when Amy got to work, it was to the disturbing news that only one patrol car had returned to the precinct, that the rest of them were MIA, that the military had been calling. Queens was supposed to be bad back then - back then because it feels as though years have passed in those few hours.

_Damaging the brainstem is the only way to stop animation. Amy closes her eyes as she replays the last line of the article in her memory._

_Damaging the brainstem is the only way to stop animation._

_Damaging the brain stem is the only way to stop animation._

_Jake._

_Please be safe, Jake._

***

They are going to the 6-8 and will secure the area between the precincts on their way there. That is as much of a plan as they can make at this point.

In the stairway, Amy has the nauseating feeling that they don’t really know what they’re heading into. The last news any of them have heard was a call for people to stay home and lock themselves in. The military was being deployed to several crisis areas across the country. They weren’t sure how high on the list New York was with Washington D.C. reportedly “transformed into a warzone”. There had been no new orders from the rest of the NYPD, no communication at all and when Terry had picked up the phone on his desk before they’d left the floor, the line was dead. Their own phones were useless, too, and so were the computers. Complete blackout.

“I called Sharon a little less than an hour ago,” Terry said, staring at his unresponsive phone. “She and the girls were fine…”

***

On the stairs, they hear the first gunshots. The rapid sequence of pops makes Amy grip her own gun more tightly. Terry takes point and runs ahead, they all follow as fast as they can, straining not to break formation. There is screaming, then another bang.

They burst into the foyer. The first thing Amy realises is that the doors are open. The second thing she realizes is that there is a body on the ground lying in the open doorway between precinct and sidewalk and that another person is kneeling on top of that body, hunched over. For a split second she thinks that what she’s seeing is someone giving somebody CPR. Then her brain registers the noises, the wet chewing sounds and she sees a string of something - flesh - rip off the body as the… the thing on top of it lifts its head to stare at them. 

It’s wearing a uniform. A badge with a name on it. Its jaw is dripping blood, still moving. Its eyes are bulging, wide, unblinking, the pupils a milky white. Despite everything she’s seen during her time with the NYPD, Amy thinks she might be sick. She can feel her gut twisting, her breakfast trying to claw its way up into her esophagus. 

“Holy mother of fuck,” breathes Hitchcock and somehow that breaks the spell. 

The thing lunges, on all fours, sliding a little in the smear of blood. 

Damaging the brainstem is the only way to stop animation. 

Amy aims and pulls the trigger.

***

It’s Officer Carter. Amy wants to avert her eyes, look away from the badge with his name on it, away from what’s left of his face, barely recognizable now with the gaping red bullet hole in the middle of it and the swath of blisters running up the side of his neck, across his cheeks all the way up to his forehead. 

Less than an hour ago he was alive, now he’s dead and at some point during those sixty minutes, he was infected. What’s the incubation period, Amy wonders. She doesn’t think there was any information on that in what she read. 

What if there’s a cure? 

But there can’t be. Carter was dead before she shot him. No heartbeat, no respiration, it said in the article, and he clearly was no longer himself. He was eating someone!

She takes a shaky breath and raises her eyes off the corpse to the open door. There are voices in the distance, screams, gunshots, an impenetrable soundscape of chaos. Where is the military?

Scully and Hitchcock are kneeling beside the other body.

“Poor bastard,” Hitchcock says.

“Wait a moment,” gasps Scully, “that’s--”

“Oh no, no, no, no,” whimpers Hitchcock.

Terry lurches toward them and Amy feels a cold shiver run down her spine. She needs to see, but she doesn’t want to--

Minutes after Carter had gone, Gina followed, then Charles… and Rosa. 

She feels her eyes fill with tears as she stumbles forward. So much blood. Brown hair. Please no.

“Barney,” sobs Scully.

“Barney?” exclaims Terry, equal parts relief and annoyance, “Who’s Barney?”

“How dare you?! Barney was our hotdog vendor!” yells Hitchcock and Amy almost laughs, except that that’s so wrong because this poor guy was killed in this horrific manner, but he’s not Charles or Rosa, thank God he isn’t, he’s not someone she loves. Only someone somebody else loves, her awful brain supplies.

“Looks like he bled to death. His throat’s all torn open,” Hitchcock says.

“Poor Barney,” whimpers Scully, patting the dead man’s hand, “it wasn’t your time, there were so many more hotdogs I was going to buy from you. I was going to make you richer than my cardiologist.”

Terry is quietly shaking his head, gun lowered to point at the ground, while Hitchcock puts a comforting hand on Scully’s shoulder.

Scully pats Barney’s hand again and suddenly Amy’s brain registers the blisters on the back of that pale, dead hand.

“Scully, Hitchcock, get away,” she shouts just as Barney’s eyes pop open and his fingernails claw into Scully’s hand.

“Shit,” yells Terry. Hitchcock tries to stumble to his feet, pulling on Scully, who screams when the creature’s teeth sink into his wrist. 

Amy’s gun wavers in her hands; Hitchcock’s broad back is blocking her shot. 

Terry fires a bullet that rips into Barney’s cheek, which doesn’t even give the monster pause. With Hitchcock’s help, Scully finally manages to pull himself free. Cradling his bleeding wrist, he clings to his friend and as he tries to come after them, Amy shoots Barney in the back of his head. 

Everyone is out of breath. 

“Let me see that,” Hitchcock says to a whimpering Scully, leaning in to inspect his injury. 

“It… burns,” mumbles Scully, his knees buckling.

Hitchcock slips an arm around him, trying to support him, but he goes down anyway. Terry catches him, so he doesn’t fall too hard.

“You were bit…” Terry says, looking up at Amy, the dread in his expression twisting her stomach. 

“Just a little,” protests Hitchcock, “It’s a scratch! You’ll be fine, Scully!”

“My skin feels like it’s on fire…”

“He’ll be fine,” Hitchcock repeats, setting his jaw.

Amy kneels down next to them. Slowly, she reaches out and touches Scully’s neck to feel his pulse. His skin is hot to the touch, his heart racing.

Terry swallows audibly.

“Amy,” he whispers, glancing down at Scully’s wrist. Hitchcock has pushed Scully’s sleeve up to look at the bite. There is the expected imprint of teeth, and blood, yes, but not a lot… however… they all watch in silent horror as the skin around the bite bubbles into blisters, one popping up next to the other.

“Oh God,” breathes Amy.

Scully’s eyelids are fluttering. He lets out a long, low moan that chills Amy to the core.

He’s dying and then he’ll turn, that rational voice in her head says. We need to destroy his brainstem before he attacks.

The tension in Terry’s shoulders tells her that he’s thinking the same thing. He takes a step back and raises his gun. 

“Hitchcock,” he says, voice shaking ever so slightly, “I need you to move away from him.”

“What? Sarge..?” Hitchcock gapes at Terry, at the gun he is now aiming at Scully’s head. “No…”

“I’m sorry,” Terry says softly.

“No!”

“Hitchcock, there’s nothing we can do,” even as she says it, Amy wonders if it’s true. They don’t have enough information and no way to get help. At this point, they don’t know how much time Scully has left. His breathing is already stuttering. 

“You can’t just shoot him like an animal!” cries Hitchcock. “He’s my best friend!” With that, he throws himself onto Scully, blocking their shot. 

“Dammit, Hitchcock!” shouts Terry and moves to pull Hitchcock off Scully. Amy is closer and so she grabs Hitchcock’s arm and starts pulling as hard as she can.

There is a choking noise, then a gurgling breath, stuttering into silence. It happens in less than two seconds: like a lit fuse, a line of blisters erupt along the side of Scully’s face and he lurches up in Hitchcock’s arms to sink his teeth into his cheek.

Hitchcock screams, voice frayed with panic.

Amy lets go of Hitchcock and staggers to her feet. Just as she raises her gun, her head filled with a constant stream of no, no, no, this can’t be happening, two shots ring out.

One hits Scully, the other the back of Hitchcock’s head.

Shocked, Amy looks up at Terry, but he is staring just as wide-eyed as she must be. 

“They were both dead anyway,” Rosa says as she steps closer, lowering her gun. Behind her stands Gina, hand pressed over her mouth.

“How could you…” It’s not an accusation, it’s just that Amy doesn’t understand. She was trying to pull the trigger too, but her fingers refused to work, because they were… They were Hitchcock and Scully.

“Can’t hesitate,” Rosa says, her voice, Amy notices, is thicker than normal, “We don’t have that luxury.”

“Diaz…” Terry wipes a hand across his face. “Jesus.”

“It’s bad out there,” Gina says. She’s very much not looking at Hitchcock and Scully. “Like real bad.” 

Amy has to tear her eyes away from the back of Hitchcock’s head, the dark crater there, oozing blood. It’s like a black hole in the room, sucking her attention. Her insides feel hollowed out, her mind vacant as though she is floating away from herself. She wishes she could. But that’s not who she is. 

Her toes dig into the insoles of her tactical boots. She ignores her twisting stomach and tightens her grip on her gun. 

“How many infected did you see out there?” she asks Rosa. 

“Too many.” She has already turned away again to close the doors.

“I need to get Sharon and the girls…” Terry mumbles as he pushes past Rosa. 

“Might be too late, Sarge.” Rosa doesn’t look at him, she knows she can’t stop him. Gina is walking towards the stairs, arms wrapped around herself, uncharacteristically quiet. “It’s stupid to split up,” Rosa grumbles as she closes the doors behind Terry. Which is a ridiculous thing to say, Amy thinks, after Rosa has done the exact same thing. Only, she returned without anyone but Gina and neither of them have mentioned their families.

“We can’t just stay here,” Amy says, though she’s not sure she has a better plan. Plus, when Jake and the captain come back, they’ll know to find them here.

“Can’t go out there either--” Rosa shakes her head. “We need to secure this place.”

It’s fucked up, Amy thinks that they’re just standing here with Hitchcock and Scully dead on the floor, and that Terry just left and might never come back.

“Did you see Charles?” she asks.

“No,” Rosa replies.

“He might have made it. He’s small and squirrely and good at blending into the background thanks to all that gross beige and brown he wears,” Gina says.

Cool, cool, cool, okay. It’s better to think that way. Better than trying to imagine what might have happened to him. Amy squares her shoulders, forcing unproductive thoughts out of her mind. “We have to make sure the building is clear,” she tells Rosa and Gina. “Let’s get back up to the armory.” This is going to be their base until Jake and the captain come back. This is where they’ll find each other again.


	3. Kevin, terrified

Something is amiss with Professor Breyer, this is what Kevin is told in passing by Wesley when he arrives at his office. Wesley, even more puffed-up and self-righteous than usual, then goes on to complain loudly about the issue, presumably on the phone with the secretary of the department for comparative linguistics. 

Kevin withdraws and closes his door, wondering if the new disease is to blame for the professor’s absence. There was something on the news the previous night, but Kevin had been too tired to watch. With Raymond gone - for almost six months now - he has descended into a mental state dangerously close to depression. 

He did not even pick up his newspaper this morning. Raymond usually brings it inside and reads it at the breakfast table, pointing out interesting articles and headlines to Kevin. On the weekends, they do the crossword together. Kevin has not touched a crossword for months now. 

At least at the university, he can function. He can pretend that everything is normal. That he did not spend the night rolling around in his empty bed, burying his face in his husband’s pillow and using it to muffle his screams of frustration. Here, Cheddar is not looking at him funny and Martin is not calling to invite him over for pity-dinners. Here he is at work.

Kevin opens his laptop, mind set on productivity. In Raymond’s absence, he will write a book! Perhaps he will write two books, he certainly might if Raymond is gone much longer. Kevin sighs - he hopes he won’t write three. But these are not productive thoughts, so he pushes them away.

He manages to type two sentences into his manuscript file before the screaming starts.

Kevin jerks back in his chair, startled by the female voice, high-pitched and panicked, repeating “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” at rising volume. “Help,” someone else yells, loud enough to be heard over the unintelligible screaming of others. 

Kevin jumps to his feet and runs into the hallway, not sure what he is going to do. He almost collides with Miss Freeman, the department secretary, who is running in the opposite direction. “I’m calling 9-1-1,” she gasps as she pushes past him to dive into her office and slam the door. 

“What the hell is going on back there?” Wesley stalks toward the commotion. It’s coming from the seminar rooms down the hall. Kevin sees two female students run out of one of the larger ones and head for the elevators, where another young woman is already pummeling the button.

Four campus security officers emerge from the stairs. “Professors, please go back to your offices and close the doors,” one of the men calls over before approaching the seminar room. Kevin swallows. He feels rooted to the ground. Slowly, he backs away, into his office and shuts the door, leaning his back against it.

No shots were fired, he thinks. It’s not an active shooter situation. It might just be a fistfight, a young man upset about his grades or something. Most of the students are under immense financial pressure in addition to the academic pressure inherent to studying at a renowned university.

Kevin closes his eyes. Why is there still so much screaming? So many frantic footsteps? “Stop!” someone yells, “What are you--”

“No!” a woman wails, then starts sobbing. 

Doors are slammed. There is a loud crash, followed by a dull thump. A body hitting the ground?

Kevin’s chest is tight. He has to remind himself to breathe. He wants Raymond, he wants Raymond here now. Raymond would know what to do.

But his husband is not here, and if Kevin succumbs to the childish impulse to curl in on himself, he might never see him again. He has to do something; this is clearly not a minor scuffle over grades. But what is it?

He turns around and sucks in a deep breath that hisses through his teeth. Slowly, he reaches for the doorhandle, applies carefully measured pressure and cracks the door open just wide enough to peek out. There is red on the wall, a handprint, dragged into a smear. It looks almost exactly like a larger version of something a very young Marcus left on the wall of his and Raymond’s first shared apartment decades before - Kevin had to stop Raymond from handing his sister a bill for the strip of wallpaper they replaced. 

This, however, is not ketchup. 

Kevin’s gaze follows the smear of blood. He tries not to smell it, to ignore the cloying, metallic taste the scent leaves on the back of his tongue, threatening to make him gag. He has to open the door a little further to see down the hallway. It’s quieter now, the screams dulled by distance. Closer, however, Kevin can hear choked gasps, a soft gurgling.

A few steps from Kevin’s office, someone seems to be lying on the floor. Through the crack, Kevin can see the soles of the person’s shoes, the twitch of a foot. A shudder runs through him, every tiny hair on the back of his neck standing up. He needs to help this person, but something is stopping him. Once again, he feels frozen in place, his heart pounding out a panicked crescendo in his ribcage. 

Sirens are wailing outside. That must mean help is on the way. 

Kevin wants to call out to Miss Freeman and Wesley, but something is stopping him. His throat is too tight to produce any sound. He slips one hand into his pocket and takes out his phone. Perhaps he should call 9-1-1 - or Raymond’s precinct, and although that impulse does not make much sense, Kevin cannot help but think it would be a relief to hear Gina’s voice. His phone, however, lies dark and unresponsive in the palm of his hand, refusing to show him anything but the reflection of his terrified face.

Kevin thumbs at the screen, then at the power button, to no avail. The device does not come back to life. It makes no sense, as the battery was at ninety-three percent forty-seven minutes earlier. 

Meanwhile, pandemonium seems to have spread through the entire building. Muffled screams rise up from the lower floors, the cacophony penetrating the sound-proof walls and ceilings of the university’s hallowed halls. 

Kevin’s shaking hand drops the phone back into his pocket. He darts over to his desk and picks up the receiver of his landline. There is only the noise of his surroundings, no matter how hard he presses it against his ear and mashes the buttons. The screen of his open laptop stares at him, black and hopeless.

Then his door creaks, and a memory flashes through Kevin’s mind, of the day before when he asked the janitor to oil the hinges, and for that split second he is annoyed by the staff’s negligence, even as he looks up and sees Wesley stumbling into his office. 

The sight makes Kevin’s blood run cold. Wesley is staring at him, wide-eyed, unblinking, unseeing? His eyes seem glazed over, devoid of humanity. His mouth is hanging open, a silvery thread of saliva winding through his beard. Then, Kevin’s gaze wanders down, drawn by the shocking red all over Wesley’s neck and chest. Gaping wounds. Kevin’s brain is slow to process the visual information. There is so much blood. There is flesh ripped open, exposing muscle and cartilage. 

Kevin sucks in a breath and stumbles backwards, nearly tripping over his chair. Wesley should not be able to move, yet he is progressing towards Kevin. His gait is strange, jerky. Impeded, Kevin realises, by his right leg, which is bent oddly, the shinbone appearing to be broken.

“Wesley… oh God…”

Wesley does not react to Kevin’s voice. He keeps setting one unstable foot in front of the other, robotic, his empty eyes fixed on Kevin. His movements become more urgent with every step. Kevin wants to squeeze his eyes shut against the horror of the open neck wound. His carotid artery, Kevin thinks, blood should be pulsing from the gash, in time with Wesley’s heartbeat. And yet it doesn’t.

Wesley leaps across the desk.


End file.
